iPad Market Share to Grow Due to Increased Enterprise Adoption

Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad will continue to dominate the tablet market in 2013 thanks to increased adoption in businesses, according to an investor note released Monday by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, and reported byAppleInsider. The surge in enterprise adoption of Apple’s full-sized tablet will protect its market share from the popular iPad mini and competing Android- and Windows-based products.

Mr. Munster drew his conclusions on the iPad's adoption rate from a recent survey of 59 chief information officers (CIOs) from 12 different industries. The survey revealed that 57 percent of respondents planned to deploy tablets to their organization’s employees in 2013, up from 46 percent who had such plans in 2012.

Of those organizations planning tablet deployment, 15 percent anticipated a “broad” deployment, a large increase from last year’s 4 percent, while “selective” deployments of the portable devices remained steady at 42 percent. Alternatively, 34 percent of respondents reported plans to invest in additional PC purchases in the coming year.

Although the survey asked about plans for “tablets” overall and not “iPads” specifically, Mr. Munster believes the results are a positive sign for the Cupertino company as the iPad is generally regarded in the enterprise market as a superior choice to smaller tablets and is better for business-focused content creation:

We view the greater deployment of tablets as a positive for AAPL given that we believe the iPad has over 60% global tablet share and likely a higher share among enterprises. We believe continued growth in enterprise tablet deployment will help drive continued growth in the full sized iPad segment given the larger iPads are better for content creation.

In a sign that the tablet market still has significant room for growth in the next 3 to 5 years, only 5 percent of survey respondents anticipated a decrease in tablet spending for 2013, while over 20 percent plan to cut spending on traditional PCs.

Apple is currently valued at $525.38 in pre-market trading, down 1.62 (0.31 percent) from its Friday close. The company will hold its first quarter results call on Wednesday, January 23 at 5:00 PM EST. The Mac Observer will provide live coverage of the call and analysis of the results.